Observing Tool

The ALMA Observing Tool (OT) is a Java application used for the preparation and submission of ALMA Phase 1 (observing proposal) and Phase 2 (telescope runfiles for accepted proposals) materials. It is also used for preparing and submitting Director's Discretionary Time (DDT) proposals. The current Cycle 5 release of the OT is configured for the present capabilities of ALMA as described in the Cycle 5 Call For Proposals. Note that in order to submit proposals you will have to register with the ALMA Science Portal beforehand.

Note that preparation of Cycle 4 DDT proposals needs to be done using the Cycle 4 version of the Observing Tool. This version of the OT can be found in the DDT page, or the Phase 2 menu.

Download & Installation

The OT will run on most common operating systems, as long as a 64-bit version of Java 8 is installed (see the troubleshooting page if you are experiencing Java problems). The ALMA OT is available in two flavours: Web Start and tarball.

The Web Start application is the recommended way of using the OT. It has the advantage that the OT is automatically downloaded and installed on your computer and it will also automatically detect and install updates. There are some issues with Web Start, particularly that it does not work with the Open JDK versions of Java such as the "Iced Tea" flavour common on many modern Linux installations. The Oracle variant of Java should therefore be installed instead. If this is not possible, then the tarball installation of the OT is available.

The tarball version must be installed manually and will not automatically update itself, however there should be no installation issues. For Linux users, we also provide a download complete with a recommended version of the Java Runtime Environment. Please use this if you have any problems running the OT tarball with your default Java.

Documentation

Extensive documentation is available to help you work with the OT and optimally prepare your proposal:

If you are a novice OT user you should start with the OT Quickstart Guide, which takes you through the basic steps of ALMA proposal preparation.

Audio-visual illustrations of different aspects of the OT can be found in the OT video tutorials. These are recommended for novices and advanced users alike.

More in-depth information on the OT can be found in the User Manual, while concise explanations of all fields and menu items in the OT are given in the Reference Manual. These two documents are also available within the OT under the Help menu.

Troubleshooting

If you have problems with the installation and/or startup of the OT, please see the troubleshooting page. A list of currently known bugs, their status and possible workarounds can be found on the regularly updated known OT Issues page. A further source of information is the OT section of the ALMA Helpdesk Knowledgebase - this contains a number of articles that deal with frequently-asked questions. After exploring these resources, if confusion over some aspect of the OT remains, or if a previously unidentified bug has been uncovered, please file a Helpdesk ticket.